Although most of the sliding covers are installed for protecting camera lens, there are diversities of structural innovation created one after another by manufacturers; for instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,574, U.S. Pat. No. 6,257,776, U.S. Pat. No. 6,264,378, U.S. Pat. No. 6,322,259 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,491,448, the cover is a box-like cover plate, is connected to the equipment body. When taking the pictures, the user can telescopically slide the box-like cover plate to reveal the lens. The box-like cover plate can further be equipped with some operation buttons or components such as flash light, connected to the PCB inside the camera through flexible PCB or cable. The structure is complicated and the assembly is difficult.
Other patent related sliding cover, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,240,735, 4,522,478, 5,805,947, the sliding cover equipped with simple shelter function, but not none of them has function to switch the operation power of the camera. Some other sliding cover, disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,819,127, 5,892,996, 6,079,883, 6,424,803, etc., have provided a sliding cover which having slots on the back of the sliding cover to trigger some tiny components, however, it is a complicate structure and difficult to assemble the same.
It is said, that OLYMPUS™ Corporation may probably be the first company utilizing a sliding cover to control the power switch. Inside, the sliding cover, a leaf-like switch component is installed for touching the start and end point; meanwhile, a compressed spring and a plurality of steel balls are buried to be used as clicking element. Since components are buried, the sliding cover is thus getting thicker. Moreover, if the outer surface of the sliding cover is not treated with painting, the buried components will be exposed and affect its appearance. The structure of the sliding cover in the present invention is simple, easy to assemble and may save the cost.